<p>We have been doing additional research on colleges as I have been getting my acceptances, and while doing so we found something odd about GMU. There are numerous articles we have found that indicate that the Koch brothers donated a lot of money to the school to try to promote more conservative economics classes. Given that I may major in economics, this is something I wanted to look into more before I went any further.</p>
<p>Can anyone who has taken economics at GMU give me an idea of how much of an influence this donation had on the program? I dont want to give the impression that I'm averse to anything which isn't strictly liberal, but there is definitely a tipping point between a different perspective and corporate brainwashing, and I want to make sure that I am not walking into something that I may regret later.</p>
<p>Your research should have easily shown you that Koch industries donates heavily to the Mercatus Center, a libertarian economic think tank, that is only housed at George Mason. In addition to their political and economic interests, they also donate heavily to the Special Olympics, international poverty reduction campaigns, NOVA, and PBS. Before castigating them as malevolent straw men, bent upon brainwashing, please understand that the world is not as black and white as you seem to presume.</p>
<p>As for the academic discipline of economics, you will be exposed to both free market and Keynesian economic models. Your education will be neither ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’. You will learn about both approaches and all of those in between. That’s a good thing. </p>
<p>That’s good. Thank you. I’m sorry if I came off as a little close minded. This was just raised as a potential concern, I wanted to get the opinion of someone who had actual experience with the program, (rather than a political blog looking for a story) and I couldn’t think of a good way to ask the question. </p>